editorial

March 14 is Tree-planting Day in the DPRK.

The Workers’ Party of Korea put forward tree planting and afforestation as important tasks for the development of the country, wellbeing of the people and prosperity of all generations to come throughout the whole period of its revolutionary leadership and has pushed ahead with them.

Though he was busy leading the building of a new country after Korea’s liberation, President Kim Il Sung climbed Moran Hill and unfolded a far-reaching plan for turning all mountains into a people’s paradise covered with thick forests.

During the grim Fatherland Liberation War, he was so deeply grieved by the fact that many forests were burned by the bombings of the US imperialists that he said many forests should be planted through a mass movement.

That day was March 14 1952.

From then on, the mountains of the country got greener day by day.

Chairman Kim Jong Il worked heart and soul to turn the whole country into thick forests and gardens till the last period of his life, especially at the hard times when the country was faced with severe ordeals due to the hostile forces’ vicious moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK and successive natural disasters.

The noble desire of the President and the Chairman to turn the whole country into a people’s paradise full of green woods is being translated into reality under the wise leadership of the respected General Secretary Kim Jong Un.

In November 2014, he visited the Central Tree Nursery under the Ministry of Land and Environment Protection and said that there was no room to step back with bare mountains left as they were, calling on the entire Party, the whole army and all the people to turn out in the forest restoration campaign, regarding forest restoration as a war with nature, just as the whole country had turned out for reconstruction on the debris after the war.

In February the following year, he published a historic work “Let the Entire Party, the Whole Army and All the People Conduct a Vigorous Forest Restoration Campaign to Cover the Mountains of the Country with Green Woods”, clearly indicating the tasks and ways for the restoration of the country’s forests.

He clarified afforestation and forest conservation as a consistent policy of the Workers’ Party of Korea at the historic Eighth Congress of the WPK, the Fifth Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly and other major meetings.

Over the past ten-odd years since the start of the forest restoration campaign, the country’s forests have changed beyond recognition.

Modern tree nurseries where the sapling production is on a scientific, industrial and intensive basis have been built across the country, thus more than doubling the production of saplings.

And a dynamic movement was launched involving all people to turn all the mountains in their local areas into “gold and treasure mountains”, newly creating more than one million hectares of forests.

A forest science research base was established and an agroforestry management method was actively introduced to raise the utilization rate of forest lands.

Meanwhile, the nationwide forest fire monitoring information service system has proved effective and forest pest control has been pushed forward as a mass campaign, bringing about a radical improvement in forest conservation.